Unlocking the Correct Abdominal Training Methods

Many people have questions about why they spend every day exercising their abs, and it's rare to see abs. Moreover, it often leads to soreness, making you question whether to continue your training.Do you really understand your own physical condition and the state of your abdomen?

The following aspects will teach you how to avoid common misconceptions about abdominal training.

1 You should ensure that the abdominal muscles adapt by pushing yourself to your limits.

Many people think that abdominal training is ineffective because their number of sets is not enough. Most of the time, this is because your number of sets plus your body fat are too high. Another reason is that you train too leisurely, simply not pushing your abdominal muscles to break through your own limits.

When you train your abs at a high number of sets without pushing yourself to your limits, you won't be able to reach a new height. Therefore, fitness training is not always easy. You need to put in some effort to achieve fitness results.2 Don't treat the abdomen as a whole, and learn to split the muscles.

Some people are only aware of the six muscles visible on the abdomen, and have little systematic knowledge of the muscles surrounding the abdomen. In addition to the six muscles that are commonly visible on the abdomen, you should also know the distribution and structure of other surrounding muscles.

External oblique muscle:

Located on both sides of the midline of the anterior abdomen, inside the external oblique muscle sheath, for the upper wide and lower narrow striped muscles, originating from the iliac crest and iliac spine, and the muscle fibers ascend to the sternum and the 5th to 7th ribs anterior.

Internal oblique muscle:Runs parallel to the muscle fibers, with a blunt separation of the internal oblique muscle, visible under the internal oblique muscle, located on the innermost layer of the abdominal muscles, with muscle fibers running parallel from top to bottom, originating from the lumbar spine transverse processes and rib arch inner side, and connected to the diaphragm attachment.

The external oblique muscle:Broad and flat muscle, located in the superficial layer on the anterior outer side of the abdomen, the starting point is serrated, originating from the outer side of the 8th rib to the 10th rib, the muscle bundle extends forward downward from the upper side, and the back muscle bundle terminates at the iliac crest front.

To know your enemy and yourself is to achieve victory. Although the external oblique muscle is a muscle, you can still train it through changes in movement.To train the upper part, you need to bend your body from top to bottom, the rope crunches are a good fixed lower part of the abdomen to train the upper side.

For training the lower part of the abdomen, you need to fix the upper part of the abdomen, lift the pelvis upwards—prone legs raise. For crunches, you can simultaneously train the upper and lower parts of the abdomen.

3 The abdominal training action must be standardizedMany people only know that they want to exercise their abs, but they also have a misconception—when exercising their abs, they need to keep their backs straight. Many people don't know that this is a dangerous posture for exercising their abs. Exercising your abs is not like pulling, squatting, etc. which requires you to keep your back straight. Doing so will only hinder the contraction of your abdominal muscles, thus affecting the training effect.

The correct approach is to bend your waist, allowing you to completely crunch your abdominal muscles, shorten the external oblique muscle, and achieve the effect of training. At the same time, the muscles of the lower back will also be stretched.

4 Don't use your neck to pull to generate force

Many people are accustomed to placing their hands behind their heads when performing crunches. Doing so effectively squeezes the upper limbs closer to their chests without any additional help.

More seriously, this not only helps your abdominal muscles but can also negatively affect your spine's positioning.

Although injuries from training with your neck are rare, pulling with your neck can cause a neck strain, stopping your training.

5 Don't abandon training quality for the sake of number and number of setsSome fitness beginners are always accustomed to maximizing the number of sets and numbers, and eventually pursue doing faster and faster. However, the number of sets should not be your goal for abdominal training. Speed and number of sets will only make your abdominal training less effective.

High-quality movements require the abdominal muscles to be fully engaged throughout the movement, without relying on inertia, and complete the movement range. Here is a little trick to reduce inertia:

Hold at the top of the movement, deliberately contract your abdominal muscles, and then slowly return.

6 Abdominal training after nutrition supplementation is more importantSome people train diligently and always do a lot of crunches, but they don't pay attention to their diet after training, and the training is easily canceled out. Don't think that after eating and exercising a lot or doing a few crunches, it can compensate for the training.

Suppose a cake is 500 calories. If you want to completely burn off this 500 calories, crunches alone cannot do it. You need to run for at least 110 minutes (nearly 2 hours) on a running machine to burn off a cake.

It has been repeatedly emphasized: 'Abs are made in the kitchen!' Starting today, pay attention to your diet, as long as it's healthy and nutritious, you can believe that you will see beautiful abs next summer.

7 Abdominal training should be comprehensive and consider all actions, not single action training

Some people stay in the gym or at home for two hours and only do crunches. This training can only stimulate the external oblique muscle, internal oblique muscle and the deep external oblique muscle, which cannot be adequately exercised. Although the abdomen can be considered as a whole, you still need to consider it comprehensively.

For the variation of abdominal training movements, if you have been doing crunches with leaning crunches or prone leg raises and raises, then after a period of time, you can choose to change the plate crunches or prone legs raise etc.